MOONJI Novel Classics

“Moonji Novel Classics” series are the modern classics of our generation that have been enriched with new stylish format and comments of renewed profoundness.

Readers loved them and critics appraised them, when the first editions of these books were published. And they are still being loved and appraised after all these years. They are the true “steady sellers”. Moonji verified the original texts and published the masterpieces with new stylish format and comments of renewed profoundness. Moonji Novel Classics is a literary feast of the masterpieces.

Seo’s novel is an attentive and delicate record of life. A melancholy shadow is hanging down on the seemingly vibrant life. The author’s literary experiment expands to the contents of a story. The readers can experience the extreme-style experiment in this excellent work that shines the genre in a new way.
*La Rivi?e, Actes Sud, 1997

First published 40 years ago and which has been printed an additional 130 times since then, it is the monument of Korean Literature.
Locked-room without an open space or an open space without a locked room. The first and only fiction that dealt with the partition of South and North Korea with an ideological approach. In this true classic of modern Korean literature, the protagonist, Myoung-Joon Yi’s tragedy and aspiration are those of our own nation.

The masterpiece of the author with the most bestsellers in the history of Korean literature!
The persistent disease fighting people of the beautiful island, Sorokdo, show us the lust for utopia and the conflict with the mechanism that betrays it. The author analyzes this conflict with a sharp scalpel, and he presents us a “practical reconciliation on freedom and love”.

The harshness, pain, sorrow and spite of “the filthy era” are revived in the eyes of a young boy. In this document of a boy growing up in the painful age of partition, his surprising memory tracks the reality of the post-Korean War era of the early fifties with precise objectivity and abundant lyricism.

This controversial work deals in depth with the disruption of ideology and the partition of a nation by comparing/contrasting the disastrous experiences of the Korean War and its present situation. The history and the present situation are recognized by discussing the ever present struggle between ideologies.

With 8 short stories and novellas starting with “Sunsetting West Mountain”, this is the first consecutive work to illustrate the downfall of the ancient world and the countryside with a touch of nostalgia. What caused it? The Partition and war. Rich vocabulary and textural style are dramatic elements which enable the readers to visualize the subject matter.

This is the second work of the author who opened a new chapter in Partition Literature with “Monsoon Season”. This masterpiece shows the spirit of honest and consistent criticism by exposing the problems of the seventies in Korean society seen with a broad symbolic point of view.

About the despair and suffering of a modern man, the young novelist saunters about in the shadowy deep end of reality with an experimental literary style that challenges the traditional. A painful record of the growth of the self.

In this pure crystallization of an experimental writer’s mind, the author strived to find the new meaning of life and holistic vision by fighting against and dismantling the false awareness that veils our consciousness and lives.

His dark, terrifying and gruesomely beautiful literary world intensely questions the meaning of a practical life. After winning the literary contest held by “Seoul Daily News” in the Spring of 1981 with “Dog Thief”, he wrote many controversial works and became one of the most notable authors of the 80’s. This is surely one of his best pieces.

This is the first collection of the writings of a female author – who bashed the stale ordinary life with delicate perfectionism. Joung-Hui Oh caught the attention of the audience by describing the delicate scenery of mind and exposing the existential anxiety of humankind at the same time. This novel won the “Yi Sang Literature Award” in 1979 and the “Dong-In Literature Award” in 1982.

By displaying the inner thoughts of women by generations, from childhood to the middle ages, the author expresses the universal grudge and despair, life and death, and wandering and discipline that exists in Korean women through this collection of stories.

Seeing such universal views as Christianity, Buddhism, alchemy and legends as a common structure, the author materialized the ultimate immortal man-god with a full-length epic style novel. He reigns as the leader of Korean metaphysical novels. He spells out the meaning of death and existence with religion and ideology.

What if, the Koreans were still the discriminated subordinate “Peninsula People” under the rule of Japan with the Korean language and history erased, and they were living in misery without the knowledge of their own racial root? Along with Swiftian wisdom and the Orwellian atmosphere, sharp sarcasm and critical introspection bloom.

An adventurous trip to the unconscious shows the materialization, self-consciousness and inaction of the modern man. This first collection of works by Soo-Choul Choe shows the de-construction of humanity and how all humans are not living but dying a slow death. He won the Chosun-Ilbo literary contest with “Blind Point” in the Spring of 1981, and also won “Yoon Dong-Joo Literature Award” and “Yi Sang Literature Award”.

This novel depicts the detailed and familiar everyday life of ordinary people with a self-reflective point of view. The author’s balanced view, which does not rush to the extreme of criticism nor love, shows us a wide spectrum of the modern day life.

“The Place where the Organ was” gazes upon the fate of a young woman as “I”. This is also a story about the lonely suffering of bearing with one’s own given fate. This novel subtly tracks down the mind of a woman who has fallen in love with someone she shouldn’t have.